


Advent Calendar drabbles 2019.

by je_t_oublie



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Advent Calendar Drabble, Anthology, F/M, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Episode: s02e13 Doomsday, Woman Wept (Doctor Who), the stone rose
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:55:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21776377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/je_t_oublie/pseuds/je_t_oublie
Summary: 2019's advent calendar prompts. Both gen stories and implied 9/Rose and 10/Rose stories.
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Kudos: 8





	1. Prompt 1 - AU of choice.

**Author's Note:**

> Ten years after joining leaving the Doctor Who fandom and I'm back with weirdly specific writing prompts. Find me at i-am-become-a-name on tumblr.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt one - AU of choice. 
> 
> Rose doesn't fall for Jimmy Stone, but the earnest boy who quotes Romeo and Juliet changes her life.

There are a billion, billion universes, stacked in haphazard piles like a child’s pile of building blocks, tottering out into infinity. 

Some are empty, with no collision that caused the Big Bang. In some, writing never developed, never spread from planet to planet and instead stories are handed on purely by oral tradition. An infinite amount more languages spoken with an infinite number of mouths and appendages that had evolved solely for the purpose in that universe. 

In many, there is no Rose Tyler. In some there is a Lily, or a Mike, or even in one particularly unlucky universe where she keeps her head down and blushes redder than a fire engine when anyone uses her full name, a Hibiscus Tyler. In some of them, Rose, for we’ll call her that throughout the universes, and the Doctor meet. She serves him in a shop, collides into him on the street, and, apologies exchanged, they pass out of each other’s lives with no ripples. The universe works in her own ways to save the Doctor. 

In this universe, the Rose is still a Rose. But instead of dropping out of high-school for Jimmy Stone, she falls for the cute boy with glasses who so earnestly quotes the Shakespeare she’s heard a million times. They don’t get very far, become only fond memories of held hands and first kisses, but it begins something in this universe she hadn’t had before. She stays in school, and falls in love – with language. Her first school trip to Paris and she trips into it. Her mum jibes that Rose just wants to gossip with as many people as she can, but leaves glossy magazines from the newsagents in as many languages as she can find scattered on the coffee table and brags to the other estate mothers at the laundry about how bright her girl is, and did you know she can translate those Spanish soap operas for her mum now?

Nineteen years old, and she’s a shopgirl again. But now she wears a blouse, offers advice on translations in a high end bookshop while she helps with rent and saves for uni. (She still sneaks out at lunch to get chips, and charms the Indian owner of her usual into a discount by complimenting him flawlessly in his own dialect.)  
When her work explodes, it’s thousands of pages fluttering down into the London streets and she yells fury at the man who comes running out, insults in languages merged in a way that had never been merged in such a way and probably doesn’t make sense but she’s furious. He grins, compliments her on her grasp of language she should definitely not be using. Rose lays him out flat with a hardcover copy of Hugo in Japanese, calls the police and goes home. 

She wakes up the next day, knocks a pile of books off her nightstand and remembers. They’re all she has left without her job to supply her with prospective translations for publication. Rose suddenly wishes it was a complete Shakespeare collection she’d clobbered him with. She gets her chance when there’s knock on the window and she pulls open the curtain before realising it doesn’t face the part of the building with a walkway. It’s him, clinging to a concrete outcrop and grinning past a black eye. 

It plays out as it has played out in other universes, has yet to play out in other universes. Only when the box wheezes back into existence he offers to show her his library and she tells him that’s the worst pick-up line she’s ever heard. 

And oh.

Even between the alien worlds and the adventures words haven’t prepared her for, there’s something tantalizing in the way the Doctor speaks, his gruff Northern accent not disguising the strangeness of his sentence structures, the dozens of possible translations underlying each word before it solidifies in her mind. 

She asks the warm pulse at the back of her mind about it one day, and the surge of joy and companionship nearly knocks her into the corridor wall. She catches herself with her hand and the same feeling tingles at her fingertips and she discovers a whole new internal language. 

The TARDIS lets her hear sometimes, the voices of languages nothing like on earth. They’re never there for long enough to learn full sentences, but oh, she can say ‘help,’ and ‘thank you,’ and ‘dead’ and all the sentiments that follow the Doctor around in a thousand languages, and adds a new one very few days. Rose has never felt so alive since her first trip to Paris. 

Then there are languages without words, whole manuscripts between their interlaced fingers and their sideways smiles, and in this universe, this Rose tells this Doctor that she loves him. In turn, he let’s her hear his language, and they heal. When an accident happens as accidents do, she knows it’s him speaking their language even if it’s with a different tongue. They travel, together, and when she calls her mum it requires concentration to speak only one language, to not slip between to words that don’t exist in English but that can’t be expressed otherwise. 

They use their words, and when things occur that occur in the universe we know, they use them and when in a hundred universe they separated, in this one that stay together and speak their language that no one else throughout time knows.


	2. Prompt 2 - to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt two - "to strive, to seek, to find, and not yield." from Tennyson's poem Ulysses.   
> Rose continues despite being a universe apart.

Rose allows herself one week. 

She goes back to Pete's house with her mum, and locks herself away for six days. Jackie checks on her, and Mickey sets up in a room a few doors down. 

On day seven she comes out, eyes puffy and red but shoulders back and steel in her spine. She still has on the blue jumper that came with her from her home universe, but her jeans and T-shirt have been swapped out for still store-creased pajamas that had been left outside her door. Rose seeks out Pete (and she feels uncomfortable asking for a favour, he’s too new and he’s only just met her Jackie) and asks to borrow a computer. 

She’s not the same girl who tried to type the lone word ‘Doctor’ into the internet and expected an answer. Instead she searches for names. 

Sarah Jane Smith.   
Ace McShane.   
Tegan Jovanka.   
Ian and Barbara Chesterton. 

Names and stories she’d coaxed out of her Doctor after meeting Sarah Jane, of people he’dcared for but who had left, or were forced to leave and ended up on earth. They’re not all there in this world, but the ones she finds she calls. Ian has since passed away, but once Rose recognises the caginess with which Barbara avoids answering some questions she at least knows there’s a Doctor in this world. 

As long as Mickey goes with her in this less kind and newer world, Pete is happy to lend her a zeppelin to get her out of the house and when she meets Sarah Jane for the firstsecond time she has the same kind eyes and kind smile and Rose hugs her, unable to resist the lure of someone who knows what it’s like in the way only a handful of people do. Sarah Jane doesn’t know her yet, but brings up her arms anyway. She’s curious about the other universe, the other Doctor and her and it’s only fair that Rose shares. It loosens something to talk about it and even if between them they don’t have a way to contact this Doctor, Sarah Jane can offer up a few more leads for her – U.N.I.T. 

Tegan’s brash Australian accent comes over the phone, but in this world she had made it to her plane, and her aunt was happily retired in Melbourne, near the university. Rose apologizes and wishes her a great day even as the moon is high over Pete’s mansion and she’s the only one in the house left awake. 

Rose tracks Ace down to London, not even half an hour away from where she’s staying, and they go out to lunch. She’s unexpectedly middle aged, a far cry from how the Doctor described her, and comfortable in a shirt clearly marketed towards men, with the cuffs folded up and question marks embroidered on the collar. When Rose drops her napkin and bends to retrieve it, she spots sensible running shoes. Ace chats candidly about the Doctor, and is the first to not be surprised that Rose was only nineteen. They share stories and when Ace has to go, pleading a post lunch meeting, she leaves a card with her details and a battered enamel badge she’d pulled out of a coat pocket after a long examination of Rose. It’s another dead end in finding him (and she can only ever seem to find dead ends,) but the pin is tangible while the smell of the TARDIS air slowly fades from her jumper when she surreptitiously sniffs the collar and Rose is careful not to lose the pieces as she transfers it over to a new jacket, required in the worsening weather. 

It’s been two months. She still wears the TARDIS key around her neck. 

Torchwood is happy to have her, and if Pete is surprised that she asks to be transferred to Cardiff, he doesn’t let on but suggests, slightly awkward and uncomfortable taking up a role that is not his, that she should make an effort to call her mother regularly. Sarah Jane sends her a card when she finds out about the new job, and Ace, another pin. The small sailing ship that she pins to her jacket beside the first old-fashioned rocket reflects the Greek ship drawn on the card stuck to her workstation, held open with pins to show the words “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”


	3. Prompt 3 - rainbow.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt three - rainbow.   
> Rose and Nine in the frozen waves of Woman Wept.

The flash frozen waves of Woman Wept were freezing. Rose didn’t know why she hadn’t expected it, but the Doctor had surrendered his jacket with minimal grumbling when he saw her shivering. Their shoes slipped slightly on the waves as the TARDIS faded out of view behind him and the stars were obscured by the waves that curled above them. 

Rose, her fingers tucked in the too-long cuffs of the leather jacket, was puzzling. 

“If,” she started, “this planet is unoccupied, and you said it was, yeah?” 

“Yup.” The Doctor confirmed. The silence stretched out around them, interrupted by only the occasional crack of ice settling.

“So who named it?”

Instinctively, the Doctor went to shove his hands into his jacket pockets, and hit only jumper. 

“No one really came out here,” he hedged. “Not too many inhabited planets.” 

“And you just stumbled on it?” Rose grinned at him, and received a careful nudge to the shoulder. 

“Best way, isn’t it?” he sobered. “My people found it. On of the few planets that wasn’t just given a grid coordinate.”  
“Woman Wept,” she mused. “Isn’t that, I dunno, a bit... pretty for them?” 

“Are you saying I’m not pretty?” 

“The prettiest, Doctor.” She teased, and wriggled her hand free of the long jacket cuff to take his chilled fingers as they wandered down the ever stretching waves together. There was a long time before a quiet voice broke the silence. 

“It was a story. On Gallifrey. A woman mourning her lost lover.” 

“Oh.” Rose squeezed his hand and sidled a step closer so their arms were pressed together. “Did it at least have a happy ending?” 

“Can’t remember, and no one to ask any more.” 

“Oh.”

Their footsteps slowed as they came to the end of a wave. The stars glowed above and they stilled to look up at them. The Doctor opened his mouth to tell Rose the end of the tale of the woman that wept, but when he turned, his breath caught. The moonlight had caught on a crest of a wave somewhere, and refracted into a rainbow across her face, looking up at the stars and far brighter than any of them, even draped in the darkness of his jacket. 

Maybe the story didn’t matter after all.


	4. Prompt 4 - replacement parts.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt four - replacement parts.   
> The tenth Doctor is a little shaky after his regeneration.

Oh, by all the cursed memories of Rassilion, he had landed at Christmas. He hated Christmas... didn’t he? Damn, but he did hate the aftermath of regeneration. But Rose was waiting, had given him an uncertain smile and said her mum would kill them both if she skipped Christmas after all... that, but he didn’t have to come if he didn’t want to. Mickey had given him as a hostile look when he retreated through the TARDIS doors. 

He left the dressing gown hanging over a railing in the console room before trailing his fingers against the wall all the way to the wardrobe room. These fingers were softer this regeneration, and he silently cursed as his knee knocked against a protruding roundel that he could swear wasn’t at that height before his regeneration. When he bent down to rub it, there went his shoulder and elbow against another roundel and ouch. Lost a hand and bruised an elbow on day one. And he wasn’t sure if he’d kept his companion either. 

New hands, new lips...and he didn’t know how any of it meshed with his companion now, whether Rose would even want to travel with him. He didn’t even know if he wanted to travel with himself, and definitely not in his Ros- his companion’s mother’s boyfriend’s pajamas. Eurgh. 

Well, he knew he was just as picky as his old self. No Adam, and definitely not that doublet. He fingered the sharp point of a crown, but really, too ostentatious. And they weighed dreadfully on the neck. His instinct was still to reach for shorter, broader clothing but that wouldn’t fit anymore. Replacement parts indeed. Ah, that might fit. He held it up in front of the mirror. And that. 

He left the pajamas on the floor and those. Those were not the underwear he had been wearing. In all his lives, he had definitely not owned any with pink elastic. Please, please don’t let them be Jackie’s. He felt the hysteria bubbling up and scrubbed his hands over his face. There are an almost infinite amount of firsts every regeneration but this, this was definitely not one he was equipped to deal with. He pulled up his trousers, out of sight and hopefully out of his frankly impressive mind. Please.


	5. Prompt 5 - the light effect from distant fires.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt five - the light effects from distant fires. 
> 
> Rose and the tenth Doctor visit a planet in time for it's yearly light show.

“This planet has a whole continent off limits to habitation. There’s all kinds of interesting animals there – lizards the size of dogs that live in the fire. A natural gas deposit feeds an eternal fire and if you wait a minute-“   
The Doctor licked a finger and held it up to test the winds. “Here.” 

A cloud moved across the sun and Rose looked up as the light changed and the world washed in oranges. The sky was aflame, and she lifted her hand into the light. 

“It’s gorgeous. What is it?” 

The Doctor caught her raised hand, both stained brilliantly, and turned it over in his. 

“Smoke being blown over. High up enough in the atmosphere that it doesn’t affect their breathing.” 

Rose glanced around, having been so wrapped up in the light and her hand in the Doctor’s that she hadn’t noticed the groups, couples gazing up into the fiery skies why before there had been empty streets. She looked back at the Doctor, his head bent down and studying the way the light changed the back of her hand and set her fingernails sparkling. 

“Hey,” she said, waiting till he looked up, a soft look evident in spite of the strangeness of the highlights picked out in the orange, and he met her eyes. 

“You finally got that ginger hair you always wanted.” 

The soft look was immediately replaced by one of his widest grins, cheeks bunched up and teeth glowing as he craned his head up, trying vainly to see his short hair in a different colour. 

“I love it, Rose. We live here now. Ginger!” 

“Here,” she grinned, “let me. And you’d be bored in two days.” Rose pulled her mobile out and one-handedly pulled up the camera. She held it up, thumb hovering over the ‘OK’ button and aimed it at the Doctor. 

“Say cheese!” 

“Camembert.” The Doctor proclaimed as the shutter clicked, and Rose grinned down at the stupid photo, saved it to a folder of a thousand just like it. 

“But you’re ginger too!” he lifted a lock of her hair between his fingers and hung it in front of her face. He let go of it to pluck the phone from her unresisting fingers, and freed her other hand so he could use his arm to put around her shoulders and pull her close, holding the mobile facing away to capture them both. The shutter clicked as the cloud shifted away from the sun and the Doctor groaned. 

“Back to boring brown. I’ve changed my mind!” he handed the phone back to Rose, the picture still up on the screen, her blonde hair caught in the sunlight and the Doctor’s grinning face pressed up against her own smile. She hastily hit the save button while the Doctor was distracted by watching people wandering back inside. 

“We’re not moving here. Only ginger once a year? Not worth the carpet. C'mon.” He grabbed her hand and tugged. “If we land carefully, we can visit the lizards. Oh, maybe keep one as a pet!” 

Rose bumped into his shoulder, grinning, and her mobile carefully tucked away again. “I’d love to see you land carefully enough to even be in the right time period as the lizards. And if you catch one, it’s staying in your room.”

He tipped his nose up, mock haughtily. “The lizard would love my room.”


	6. Prompt 6 - Marble.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt six - Marble.   
> The tenth Doctor takes a trip backwards-forwards in time to prevent a statue in the British museum creating a world ending paradox. The usual problem. (The Stone Rose.)

The Doctor was still clad in his long tunic as he stepped out into the... fragrant streets of Florence on the eve of the sixteenth century, a sheaf of parchment tucked under one arm and a battered leather satchel under the other. Looking up at the buildings to get his bearings, he headed west for the art district. 

“Hello,” he called, shoving his way through a heavy wooden door into the airy and well lit space of a sculpting studio. A bearded man looked up from the shapely leg he was uncovering from the marble. 

“I’m your new apprentice.” The archaic Italian tripped neatly off the Doctor’s tongue as he dropped his sheaf of drawings on one of Michelangelo’s spare tables. He bounded over and held out his hand to the bemused artist, who stared down at it, up at him, and gingerly put out his own to clasp it with a puff of white dust. The Doctor squeezed it, and grinned. 

“Where can I start?” 

\--

He looked like he had aged fifty years in one month, the marble dust making his brown hair grey, coating his wrinkles to look decades deeper, and a scruffy beard concealing his jaw. But there she was, in shining beauty and looking almost like the last time he had seen her, yawning and hugging him goodnight before she wandered off to bed in the Roman villa one month ago. One thousand, three hundred and eighty years ago. By all the Roman pantheon looking over her, he missed Rose. Her face stared back from out of the marble, and his fingers itched to reach out and stroke her cheek. Her smile, carefully copied from the pixelated mobile photos Mickey had texted him was shining out from the now scattered and dog-eared scraps of parchment ( so not to give any ideas to Michelangelo with a mobile) was gorgeous, and he didn’t think he’d gone so long seeing it in person since he had regenerated. Well, actually, he knew he hadn’t. 

\--

When night fell and the great artist had returned to his lodgings, the Doctor returned to the TARDIS, mud and who knows what else splattered over her outside in his month’s absence. The key scraped as he entered it, and he lay a comforting hand on her door as he entered, leaving a powdery white impression wherever he touched. 

“I’m sorry, old girl.” 

Fingers gentle, he coaxed her into the precise coordinates to materialise around the marble Rose, and her outstretched fingers brushed her cheek. He looked up at the ceiling and raised an amused eyebrow at the audacity, then sneezed as it dislodged some of the marble dust from his frosted eyebrows. Ah, right. Out quickly to retrieve his drawings of Rose, erase his existence and he winked at the emerging David he had admired as Michelangelo had helped with Rose’s shapely ears, the careful lines around her earrings. She was more beautiful than David would ever be but it seemed a bit tasteless to say that to the man helping him. 

The Doctor set the coordinates to 120AD Rome, then trailed his hand along the TARDIS’s wall as he walked around away from his labour of... art in the perfectly rendered Rose and towards a shower, a shave and his far preferable real and soon to be reanimated companion.


End file.
